Chase Me Down, Link Me Up

Web/Tech

If you were at Nashville's "Barcamp" last week, then you might have been present when I went slightly ballistic during David Bullock's keynote presentation that looked back on how effectively Barack Obama's presidential campaign has orchestrated "new media" and "social networking" resources to build its grassroots networks.

As David was showing us things like Obama's top-of-the-chart listing at Twitter, his millions of Facebook followers, etc, I reverted to form and blurted out "well sure, it's easy when you've got a $300-million dollar budget..." At which point David stopped his Powerpoint presentation -- even turned off the projector! -- and explained how Barack "didn't start with $300-million...."

That may be true, but I think it misses the point, which point I have attempted to elucidate in the following e-mail that I just sent to David Bullock:

I came to the Nashville Startup Weekend expecting to listen to other folks' ideas. It didn't occur to me until the pitches were over and the projects selected that I actually had something I might have pitched if my brain had been a little more fully functioning at the time. So, here's the pitch I would have made had I not been trapped in "woulda coulda shoulda" limbo all day yesterday:

- - - - - - - -

Here's the two essential things you need to know about me:

1) In 1995, I started an Internet business with the domain "songs.com." I started it with two partners. We each pitched in $250. Total start-up capital = $750. 4-1/2 years later we sold that business for $3-million.

The first part of my pitch is: I want to turn that book into an iPhone app, and develop a new marketing program for both the hard copy and the e-book. I figure this is a book that belongs in every home that has a television. That's a potential market of oh, say, 100-million homes or so...hey, 1% of that potential market is a business.

What I really want to do is devise an "interactive marketing strategy" around the release of my second book. This one is about a man named Thomas Townsend Brown, who discovered what many people regard as an "anti-gravity" effect in the 1920s -- and then disappeared into the black world of classified military research and intelligence operations in the 1940s.

What I've learned in the course of my research about Townsend Brown is that there are technologies just out of our reach that offer comprehensive solutions to our energy, environmental, and economic challenges. These technologies promise a quantum leap in human evolution, but remain out of reach because our culture is just not ready for them.

Our technology is already light years ahead of our culture. We have computers and cell phones and digital communications, but our civilization remains mired in tribal structures that reach back more than 2,000 years.

The next leap in technology is going to first require a leap of consciousness. I propose to use the digital communications technologies that are already at our disposal to devise an "interactive marketing strategy" to facilitate that leap of consciousness around the mysteries revealed in my new book.

It’s great that the new iPhone has faster data service and GPS. And you could get lost for days in the new iPhone App Store looking at all the cool new toys and productivity tools. But quite a few Achilles’ heels—in the form of missing features—still remain in Apple’s 3G iPhone. What’s most surprising is that these features come standard in some of even the most basic models of rival phones. With these features added, the 3G iPhone could come pretty close to perfect. (This isn’t the first time we’ve complained about what’s missing from the iPhone, and many of the gripes on this list are repeat offenders.)

Chief among the missing features:

3. Selecting, copying, and pasting text

Apple fixed a few of the first-gen iPhone’s shortcomings with the early-2008 firmware update (sending text messages to more than one recipient, for example), but they didn’t add an option to edit text by selecting passages and copying and pasting them elsewhere in an e-mail message or note. And with the new iPhone firmware, they still haven’t. This missing feature is more than a little annoying for those who write more than talk, want to copy and paste long strings from URLs, or fix links that get truncated in e-mail messages.

Pope Steven keeps saying that the iPhone is supposed to be a "mobile computing" platform. But how can it even qualify as a "computer" if it can't cut and paste? That's like having a car that won't turn left or right. Hell, the very first computer I ever owned (in 1979...) came with a program called the "Electric Pencil" and IT could cut and paste... and so could my Palm Treo. So what not the iPhone? Are the saving that feature for another upgrade... that they will sell me?

Likewise the Bluetooth stereo capability would be nice. And all the other features mentioned in this article.

At least I finally have Splasshopper on my iPhone (albeit without a search function...huh?) so I can finally leave my Treo behind when I go to the store. Anybody want to by and old Treo?

I am pleased to say that last week's fiasco with a crashed (less than one year old) MacBook hard drive has been resolved successfully and amicably.

Resloved "successfully" due to the realized promise of Apple Mac OSX "Leopard's" Time Machine backup utility and its companion hardware component, Time Capsule.

Resolved amicably due to the enlightened counsel of one Apple store manager (Nicole) and the very capable aid of one "Mac Genius" (Josh).

Nicole's contribution, as noted in a previous post, was to diffuse the very unpleasant confrontation that erupted when I first took the machine to the Genius Bar last week and a technician named "Ben" expressed infinitely more fealty to Apple's replacement policy than he did to this particular customer's concerns about data loss and security. I'm sure Ben knows all there is to know about computers, but he needs to work on his people skills.

Nicole is the manager I spoke to on Saturday. She understood perfectly my reticence about walking out of the store with a blank hard drive and leaving behind the one that had all my data on it, even if it was unreadable. Granted, by the time I spoke to Nicole, I'd checked my backups and determined that I was pretty well covered, but Nicole's contribution was really allowing for whatever arrangements would be required to a) fix my computer and be) comply with Apple's "if we take it out and replace it, it's ours" policy.

Nicole said it would be OK to come back to the store on Monday with my backups and spend as much time in the store as it would require to restore my data to a new hard drive. That way, when I walked out of the store, the machine would be back in the condition it was before the crash. And, once I was satisfied with the restoration, only THEN would I have to leave the old drive behind AND measures would be taken to assure the security of its contents.

So I arrived in the store at 11 AM on Monday (after Nicole had checked the inventory to make sure there was a replacement drive on the shelf) and a technician named Josh took over. Josh did the R&R on the hard drive, and then set me up to install the OS and begin the restoration of my data to the new drive.

OK, the POLICY sucks... but the PEOPLE can be reasonable IF you can talk to the right person.

I called the store back and asked to speak to a manager. Somebody named Nicole came on the phone. I explained the dilemma. And unlike Big Ben The Enforcer, Nicole was ENTIRELY reasonable. She said I could come in to the store Monday morning, they'd swap out the hard drive, and then they will wait while I go to the side somewhere where and perform the restoration from my Time Capsule. It will probably take several hours, but when I'm done I should be leaving the store with a) a restored computer and b) once the computer is restored, somebody will destroy the old hard drive, erasing whatever data is on it so that I don't have to worry about somebody purloining my account numbers and passwords.

So, this morning I'm thinking: if security is an issue, then I really should bite the bullet and get a new hard drive from the MacAuthority. Then I have a new hard drive, AND I can keep my old one.

But wait: I just called Apple and asked: "what happens to my extended warranty if I replace the hard drive with a drive from a third party?" Answer: the warrant is voided.

So, unless I'm willing to let Apple walk away with hard drive and all its data (even if it's unreadable), the net cost of this fiasco is: $250 down the tubes for a voided warranty + $150 out of pocket for a new hard drive = $400.

So let me see if I can call the store and talk to a reasonable person....

OK, I had my first really unpleasant experience at the Apple Store today.

It pretty much started about 11:30 this morning when my not-quite-one-year-old black MacBook crashed and wouldn't reboot. There was nothing I could do to get it to start up again. I'd press the "on" button and all I got was a grey screen.

So I logged on to the Green Hills Apple Store website and snagged a 1:45 PM appointment at the "Genius Bar."

At the store, when my number came up I was greeted by the rather imposing figure of a "Genius" named Ben. It would only take a few minutes to learn why they like to put big gnarly guys behind the counter.

After performing a few simple diagnostics, Ben determined that the bad news was that the hard drive had died. Kaput. Finito. Finale. El Morte. Dead. Shit happens.

The GOOD news is: I am on the three year "Apple Care" plan for this MacBook. So the hard drive is covered.

The other GOOD news is that I'm pretty well backed up. I'm running the Leopard OS which has the Time Machine automated backup program and I've got an Apple Time Capsule dedicated backup drive in the basement, and the last backup was performed this morning about an hour before the crash. I've also got a three-week old stand alone back up on an external firewire drive. And another backup on a USB drive. So, one way or another... I've got everything.

But here's the REALLY BAD NEWS: Apple's policy regarding replacements under warranty states that once they have replaced your hardware, the old unit becomes "property of Apple Computer." So what they want to do is remove my hard drive and replace it with a brand spanking new one... and then they expect me to walk out of the store and LEAVE MY OLD DRIVE AND ALL THE DATA BEHIND!

Uh, excuse me? Say what? Just walk out with a blank drive and leave all my data behind? Seriously??